Tag Archives: Lancaster House speech

Some, controversially including the Prime Minister, have accused parliament of failing on Brexit. Last week’s Article 50 extension hands parliament responsibility for solving the crisis. Here, Meg Russell reflects on why parliamentary agreement has thus far been difficult, and what parliament now needs to do.

This week’s Brexit events have been fast moving. Following a series of House of Commons votes on 12–14 March, the Prime Minister travelled to Brussels to negotiate an extension to the Article 50 period. Beforehand she made an extraordinary – and widely criticised – statement to the nation, seeking to lay the blame for the UK’s Brexit impasse at parliament’s door. Following many hours of discussion, the EU27 offered a limited extension: to 22 May if parliament approves the existing Withdrawal Agreement, else to 12 April, before which the UK government should ‘indicate a way forward’ for the EU’s further consideration.

This gives parliament (and specifically the House of Commons) an urgent task of resolving matters, to avoid the UK ‘crashing out’ without a deal in just under three weeks. To date, parliament has been unable to resolve the Brexit dilemma. This post explores why, before turning to what should happen next.

How did we get here?

As explored in a previous post, various factors have combined to make parliament’s Brexit dilemma unique. The most important is the context provided by the June 2016 referendum. By voting for ‘Leave’, the British public issued an instruction to government and parliament, which went against the prior views of most MPs. Politicians pledged to honour the referendum result, but as pointed out by various key actors (including the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, chaired by a leading Brexiteer, and the Independent Commission on Referendums), the instruction was far from clear. As we now know, there are many different competing visions of Brexit from which MPs could choose. To complicate matters further, Theresa May’s snap general election of 2017 delivered a hung parliament and minority government, making it far more difficult than usual for parliamentary majorities to form.Continue reading →

At an evidence session with the Minister for the Constiution in March, the Lords’ Constitution Committee discussed introducing constitutional impact assessments for government bills. Here, Jack Simson Caird discusses the potential benefits of such a process on the forthcoming bill legislating for a Withdrawal Agreement, and how it might have affected the passage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act.

On 24 July 2018, the government published its White Paper Legislating for the Withdrawal Agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union. In the introduction Dominic Raab, the recently appointed Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, explained that the White Paper would outline the government’s approach to the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill (the Withdrawal Agreement Bill), which parliament must pass before exit day to implement the Withdrawal Agreement. Raab explained that the White Paper demonstrated the government’s ongoing commitment to ‘proper parliamentary scrutiny of our exit from the EU’.

Earlier in the year on 14 March 2018, Chloe Smith MP, the Minister for the Constitution, noted in evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee, another way in which the government could show such a commitment:

The second point your comment raises is the idea of whether there ought perhaps to be a constitutional impact assessment of every Bill, in the same way as we do an equality impact assessment, an environmental impact assessment or what have you.

This post examines how a constitutional impact assessment might enhance parliamentary scrutiny of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. In doing so, I look back at the lessons of the scrutiny of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (the Withdrawal Act), which received Royal Assent in June 2018, nearly a year after it was introduced to the House of Commons in July 2017. Continue reading →

Britain voted to ‘take back control’ from the EU, and Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech made the repatriation of power to Westminster a priority. But it is far from clear what kind of Brexit Britons want, nor how many of these powers will go to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland rather than the UK Parliament. Katie Ghose argues that with direct democracy on the rise, citizens’ assemblies would help people grasp the trade-offs at stake and have a voice in these monumental decisions.

Theresa May has now fleshed out her plans for Britain to leave the EU and become an independent, self-governing nation. With more detail emerging about the economic plan, it’s time to look at the democratic implications.

Serious thinking about democracy can all too often get left behind and the public shut out of these debates, as we’ve seen with English devolution. How our democracy actually takes shape after Brexit goes beyond the two-year negotiating window, and it has to mean the public will have a strong say. After all, given the focus on ‘where power lies’ during the campaign (summed up the powerful slogan ‘take back control’), it would be ironic if this wasn’t a priority.

Theresa May says the vote was about restoring parliamentary democracy by bringing back sovereignty to the UK Parliament. This is uncontroversial – after all, many people identified the issue of laws ‘being made in Brussels’ as part of a more general unease. But it is only part of the picture. The transfer will take place at the same time as the ongoing transfer of powers from Westminster to Scotland, Wales and NI, as well as devolution within England. In other words, it will happen just as power is shifting between and within the nations of the UK – with obvious ramifications for our Union.

People feel a physical remoteness from Westminster, Holyrood and the Senedd, but that distance is knitted into a growing anti-establishment sentiment. So now is an opportunity to capitalise on the positive political interest stimulated by the vote, and convert it into a sustainable mode of political engagement – with genuinely powerful citizens.

So the first question is this: what is the public role in shaping the form of Brexit?

The Constitution Unit in the Department of Political Science at University College London is the UK’s leading research body on constitutional change.

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